Two Drabbles for the 'Warn" Prompt at Slashthedrabble
Title: Got That Sinking Feeling (There's Something I Don't See)
Fandom(s): Chuck
Pairing(s): Chuck/Bryce
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 500
Summary: This could be the biggest take down of his career. When he called in for authorization, he got a face-to-face caution from an actual member of the Council.
AO3
It isn’t that he’s above taking an easy win so much as that he hates an anticlimax. This could be the biggest take down of his career. When he called in for authorization, he got a face-to-face caution from an actual member of the Council.
‘Don’t underestimate your target,’ he was told. ’We’ve lost tens of operations to him already.’
He threw together a small army and spent months planning before attacking the Intersect’s secret base.
And inside he found Bryce Larkin still recovering from his latest “death” scene. A single agent left to guard him - an analyst, from the looks of him, not even armed.
“No! No, don’t touch him… Bryce!” the analyst protested as the men led Larkin into a common area.
“It’s alright, Chuck. Remember what we talked about… Just calm down,” Larkin comforted the other boy.
He sent three of the men to lock down the analyst until they needed him, sent a couple dozen more to secure the entrances and exits of the base against Colonel Casey and Agent Walker, and still had ten men with him when he began questioning Larkin about his programming.
But he doubts now that he needed more than two. Larkin is on his knees, head still held high only because of the hand fisted in his hair. Larkin proves the legend of his skills to be just that. A legend. His resistance to torture is impressive. He incapacitated Franklin and Juarez in the few moments it took the rest of the men to restrain him, but where is the machine rumor makes him out to be?
It’s like dining at the Lambs Club and being served PB & J. Where is the challenge in bloodying your own shirt cuffs while your men stand about feeling unnecessary?
He sighs. “And to think… I was warned that the Intersect could take out a room full of assailants quite easily.”
Larkin chuckles. It’s an unsettling sound; an unsettling sight - his wide grin, blood staining a mouth full of teeth. “Oh… He can.”
The men squirm. Still afraid of the myth linked to the man kneeling in their midst.
“Really? And what would I have to do to see him accomplish such a feat?”
Larkin doesn’t blink. Though his eyes do wander… to the left and just above-
“You have to wait for him to calm down and get a grip on his emotions,” Larkin says, as though explaining the simplest of things. “Shorts out the programming.”
That’s the last warning they receive. By the time he starts crawling towards the door, away from the bodies of his fallen men, the analyst - the Intersect, he knows now - is pulling Larkin off the floor, into an embrace. A foot catches him before he can escape, kicks him onto his back.
The muzzle of Larkin’s gun is the last thing he sees.
“You underestimated the wrong man,” he hears before the flash.
He knows who Larkin does and does not mean.
Title: At the Lion's Feet
Fandom(s): Angel/Suits
Pairing(s): Wes Price/Mike Ross
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 500 words
Summary: The curious exception is the young associate assigned to Wesley in Wolfram & Hart's research department.
The best advice that Wesley could give to an up-and-coming attorney at law, looking to make his mark in the prestigious ranks at Wolfram & Hart, would be… Don’t. Save yourself while you still have your soul. Or, if it’s a bit late for that, before the bastards can draw you up an even bleaker fate.
But Wesley doesn’t give much advice these days. He doesn’t talk much at all, not to anyone to whom he isn’t bound by employment or some tenuous familial loyalty that somehow still remains despite all that he and Angel and Gunn, Spike and Illyria have done to one another. Not to anyone but them and… one curious exception. Wesley warns the young associate assigned to him in Wolfram & Hart’s research department, more or less daily, that he is on the path not only to death, but to damnation, working for (literally) the devil as they do.
“I know, Wes. Guy’s gotta eat, right?” Mike tells him, at first with humor. Then with trepidation. At last, resigned, as if he’s no choice to make. (Which doesn’t make sense; Wesley’s checked Mike’s contract. Checks it again and again, to be certain nothing’s changed. Wolfram & Hart doesn’t own Mike. Not in the sense that they like to own their minions.)
Wesley can’t fully explain why it matters to him (matters quite desperately; more each day) that the firm not get their claws into Mike. Yes, Mike is handsome. He’s charming and smart (brilliant) and young. But Wesley had thought himself beyond the capacity to appreciate those things.
He’d thought himself beyond quite a few things. Looking forward to each new day… to what fresh ideas Mike will come up with for how they can actually so some good, here in the belly of the beast. Enjoying the process of discovery when it’s come, not from long hours alone, but from nights spent examining tomes, elbow to elbow with Mike, sitting on Wesley’s couch or on the floor of Wesley’s office.
Feeling something other than a sick sort of fascination when he realizes that Mike is as taken with him… as Wesley is apparently taken with Mike.
“I’ll not bring anything good into your life, I’m afraid,” he gives Mike his most important warning, the night Mike makes the first move between them. With reams of dusty old parchment spread out around them like fog collecting. When Mike shushes him, mid-sentence, as they argue some legal precedent or another. Wesley immediately loses the thread of their conversation as the taste of Mike reaches his tongue.
“You’re the only good thing in this place,” Mike insists. Wesley doesn’t know what he wants to do with that. Despair at how utterly Mike seems to believe it. Scream? Because it were better he had nothing new to lose in this life. Nothing pure and immeasurably precious. Laugh… at himself, because Mike is wrong. Wesley is nowhere near good; hasn’t been for some time now.
But he wishes he could be.
Fandom(s): Chuck
Pairing(s): Chuck/Bryce
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 500
Summary: This could be the biggest take down of his career. When he called in for authorization, he got a face-to-face caution from an actual member of the Council.
AO3
It isn’t that he’s above taking an easy win so much as that he hates an anticlimax. This could be the biggest take down of his career. When he called in for authorization, he got a face-to-face caution from an actual member of the Council.
‘Don’t underestimate your target,’ he was told. ’We’ve lost tens of operations to him already.’
He threw together a small army and spent months planning before attacking the Intersect’s secret base.
And inside he found Bryce Larkin still recovering from his latest “death” scene. A single agent left to guard him - an analyst, from the looks of him, not even armed.
“No! No, don’t touch him… Bryce!” the analyst protested as the men led Larkin into a common area.
“It’s alright, Chuck. Remember what we talked about… Just calm down,” Larkin comforted the other boy.
He sent three of the men to lock down the analyst until they needed him, sent a couple dozen more to secure the entrances and exits of the base against Colonel Casey and Agent Walker, and still had ten men with him when he began questioning Larkin about his programming.
But he doubts now that he needed more than two. Larkin is on his knees, head still held high only because of the hand fisted in his hair. Larkin proves the legend of his skills to be just that. A legend. His resistance to torture is impressive. He incapacitated Franklin and Juarez in the few moments it took the rest of the men to restrain him, but where is the machine rumor makes him out to be?
It’s like dining at the Lambs Club and being served PB & J. Where is the challenge in bloodying your own shirt cuffs while your men stand about feeling unnecessary?
He sighs. “And to think… I was warned that the Intersect could take out a room full of assailants quite easily.”
Larkin chuckles. It’s an unsettling sound; an unsettling sight - his wide grin, blood staining a mouth full of teeth. “Oh… He can.”
The men squirm. Still afraid of the myth linked to the man kneeling in their midst.
“Really? And what would I have to do to see him accomplish such a feat?”
Larkin doesn’t blink. Though his eyes do wander… to the left and just above-
“You have to wait for him to calm down and get a grip on his emotions,” Larkin says, as though explaining the simplest of things. “Shorts out the programming.”
That’s the last warning they receive. By the time he starts crawling towards the door, away from the bodies of his fallen men, the analyst - the Intersect, he knows now - is pulling Larkin off the floor, into an embrace. A foot catches him before he can escape, kicks him onto his back.
The muzzle of Larkin’s gun is the last thing he sees.
“You underestimated the wrong man,” he hears before the flash.
He knows who Larkin does and does not mean.
Title: At the Lion's Feet
Fandom(s): Angel/Suits
Pairing(s): Wes Price/Mike Ross
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 500 words
Summary: The curious exception is the young associate assigned to Wesley in Wolfram & Hart's research department.
The best advice that Wesley could give to an up-and-coming attorney at law, looking to make his mark in the prestigious ranks at Wolfram & Hart, would be… Don’t. Save yourself while you still have your soul. Or, if it’s a bit late for that, before the bastards can draw you up an even bleaker fate.
But Wesley doesn’t give much advice these days. He doesn’t talk much at all, not to anyone to whom he isn’t bound by employment or some tenuous familial loyalty that somehow still remains despite all that he and Angel and Gunn, Spike and Illyria have done to one another. Not to anyone but them and… one curious exception. Wesley warns the young associate assigned to him in Wolfram & Hart’s research department, more or less daily, that he is on the path not only to death, but to damnation, working for (literally) the devil as they do.
“I know, Wes. Guy’s gotta eat, right?” Mike tells him, at first with humor. Then with trepidation. At last, resigned, as if he’s no choice to make. (Which doesn’t make sense; Wesley’s checked Mike’s contract. Checks it again and again, to be certain nothing’s changed. Wolfram & Hart doesn’t own Mike. Not in the sense that they like to own their minions.)
Wesley can’t fully explain why it matters to him (matters quite desperately; more each day) that the firm not get their claws into Mike. Yes, Mike is handsome. He’s charming and smart (brilliant) and young. But Wesley had thought himself beyond the capacity to appreciate those things.
He’d thought himself beyond quite a few things. Looking forward to each new day… to what fresh ideas Mike will come up with for how they can actually so some good, here in the belly of the beast. Enjoying the process of discovery when it’s come, not from long hours alone, but from nights spent examining tomes, elbow to elbow with Mike, sitting on Wesley’s couch or on the floor of Wesley’s office.
Feeling something other than a sick sort of fascination when he realizes that Mike is as taken with him… as Wesley is apparently taken with Mike.
“I’ll not bring anything good into your life, I’m afraid,” he gives Mike his most important warning, the night Mike makes the first move between them. With reams of dusty old parchment spread out around them like fog collecting. When Mike shushes him, mid-sentence, as they argue some legal precedent or another. Wesley immediately loses the thread of their conversation as the taste of Mike reaches his tongue.
“You’re the only good thing in this place,” Mike insists. Wesley doesn’t know what he wants to do with that. Despair at how utterly Mike seems to believe it. Scream? Because it were better he had nothing new to lose in this life. Nothing pure and immeasurably precious. Laugh… at himself, because Mike is wrong. Wesley is nowhere near good; hasn’t been for some time now.
But he wishes he could be.